Basic Training

WordPress is a FREE and OPEN SOURCE blogging tool and content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL.

It was first released on May 27, 2003, by Matt Mullenweg as a fork of b2/cafelog. As of December 2011, version 3.0 had been downloaded over 65 million times.

B2/Cafelog is a blogging platform created in early 2001 by Michel Valdrighi using PHP and MySQL. Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little took over the development to come up with (fork?) WordPress.

Why WordPress?

Its EASY

What is a WordPress Theme?

It is all the files that control the front-end and visual side of a site. A theme is basically what the site looks like, but can also potentially control a lot of features (custom post types, widgets, etc.) Major benefit to a theme (or a CMS overall) is separating design and content.

Main Index Template (index.php)

Header (header.php)

BASIC STRUCTURE:

Header Content
Sidebar Footer
Footer (footer.php)
Content Area/The Loop (usually page.php or single.php)

Sidebar (sidebar.php)

Template Files

Templates are PHP source files used to generate the pages requested by visitors, and are output as HTML. WordPress allows you to define separate templates for the various aspects of your site. Templates are chosen and generated based upon the Template Hierarchy, depending upon what templates are available in a particular Theme. As a Theme developer, you can choose the amount of customization you want to implement using templates. A more common use is to have different templates files generate different results, to allow maximum customization.

HOME: index.php
The index file controls what the home page looks like. By default it contains a loop that queries and then displays the most recent blog posts, with a link at the bottom to view previous posts. Alternately, you can specify to have the home page be a page you created yourself.

index.php

POSTS: single.php
The display of individual posts is controlled by a little file called single.php. It contains a loop that queries just one post and displays it. You can specify if you want sidebars, if you want it to look different than other pages on the site.

single.php

PAGES: page.php
Page.php controls what WordPress pages look like. You can choose to eliminate the sidebars or other elements, or add other unique elements for pages alone. WordPress also allows you to create different page templates for different types of pages. To create a page template simply copy page.php, rename it to whatever you want, then add this code to the top:

page.php

ARCHIVES:
archive.php, category.php, tag.php,
You can control the look and feel of different archives using template files also. If there is no archive file, the archives will look like index.php; however, you can create an archive.php to override that. If you create a file called category.php, it will override archives.php for categories only.

archive.php

loop-archive.php

What do you need?

Local Testing Server:
XAMPP - www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html WAMP - http://www.wampserver.com/en/ MAMP - http://www.mamp.info/en/index.html

HTML/PHP Editor (Notepad/Dreamweaveretc)

Tutorials?
Smashing Magazine http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ WP Tuts+ http://wp.tutsplus.com/